Prairie preservation

Landmark bill could save Florida panthers

Beyond the dirt tracks and swamps of the Florida Everglades lies a narrow, unremarkable strip of land that has taken on outsize importance in the battle to save the state’s critically endangered panthers. Barely 11 miles (18km) long and a mile wide, Chaparral Slough occupies a forgotten corner of south-west Florida, where cattle roam, cowboys still ride the prairie and birds of prey soar overhead.

This tract of ranchland and wilderness was recently acquired as part of the Florida Forever state conservation programme, which buys, or pays landowners to preserve, parcels of land rich in natural resources or habitat critical to the survival of threatened wildlife species. It is a small but crucial piece in the Florida Wildlife Corridor, a 17.7m-acre network of interconnecting landscapes that allows many of the state’s 131 imperilled animals, including panthers and bears, to roam freely.

Lindsay Stevens, Florida director of land protection at the Nature Conservancy, a non-profit involved in the project, said: “It’s important for panthers and other wildlife to have a protected corridor so that they can move and have genetic diversity to ensure the long-term survival and health of their species, and Chaparral Slough is a really important piece of the puzzle.”

But large-scale conservation takes time and money. Taxpayers paid $10.6m (£8.8m) for the land, with the owner – a ranching, cattle and timber company called Lykes Brothers – working alongside the Nature Conservancy to maintain it with guaranteed protections against its sale or development.

Fewer than 250 of Florida's panthers remain in the wild. So far this year, 25 have been killed, the vast majority in collisions with vehicles. And while the mechanisms of government slowly turn, their survival becomes ever more perilous.

It is one reason wildlife advocacy groups in Florida are welcoming a potentially game-changing conservation bill: the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. Currently making its way through Congress with bipartisan support, the bill could become law before the end of the year. If passed, it would allocate $1.3bn annually to help implement states’ official wildlife action plans (Swaps). The hope is that extra money from the federal government can speed up parts of the Florida Forever programme, which has so far acquired 352,000 hectares (870,000 acres) since it was established in 2001.

Lykes Brothers is an enthusiastic partner. It is one of Florida’s oldest and biggest landowning companies and one of the state’s largest citrus producers. “We ’re in our fifth generation now, which is pretty phenomenal,” said Cari Roth, vice-president of governmental and regulatory affairs at Lykes. “With Chaparral Slough, I think the folks involved with Florida Forever always saw it as a place that merited permanent conservation measures. It was really more about the availability of funds and the legislature, the governor and the cabinet which needs to approve all the Florida Forever purchases.”

Roth said she had seen more enthusiasm from the state in recent years and more dollars spent, but overall the programme was still unpredictable, impacting smaller landowners willing to sell.

“A person from Tallahassee [Florida’s seat of government] would come and say, ‘Hey, we’d like to buy your land, but some time in the future because I don’t really have the money right now.’ And , you know, that doesn’t recognise the economic pressures on landowners in rural Florida.”

Stevens is hopeful about the future if the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act passes. “We have a scientifically based land-protection priority list that’s been developed through the [Florida Forever] programme, so the vehicle is there.

“The projects are there, they’re prioritised already. The funding will just help us, you know, make hay while the sun shines.”